My blog and I, we meet again! We meet this time in broad daylight, breaking the 10-nocturnal-minutes-of-drunken-escapade tradition of yore, in an effort to pat off some of the dust Blog has gathered in the last 9 months, and to lay on its examination table some of my earlier-scattered-but-now-dying voices of the head!
The meeting has been arranged by a chain of events set off in the Universe by a spew of blog posts unleashing and articulating "The Ugly within". Their filthy match of the game of Pointy-Fingers played against the scenic backdrop of Punjab and Madras, has been, as per procedure, broadcasted over the fifth pillar of DeMockerySee (pronounciation: De-mo-cra-cy!) - Facebook, and is sure to catch your fancy there!
Getting back to the muse that sparked off my own humble post, the chain culminated today, in a midday screening of the movie Julie and Julia, an year 2009 melodramatic biopic, which I chanced adding to my collection of light-hearted dramas (my genre of choice), this sunnily-lit, rainy day of fall 2011!
Squirm not when I describe the aforementioned events as Starters and Dessert , that preclude the Main Course of contemplative excursion that this post will eventually be. Courtesy Julie and Julia, and it's role in inspiring me to stir things up in the dormant domain that this Blog, and by incidence a significant part of my life, had become, Culinary vocabulary is going to be the theme of the day, nay, the week, I think!
Julie and Julia - A directorial venture of Nora Ephron, adapted from Julie Powell's novel by the same name - recounts Powell's real-life tryst with French cooking as part of her self-drawn challenge to prepare in a span of 365 days, each of the 524 recipes contained in her childhood idol - Julia Child's debut book on French cooking for American women. It mingles this tryst with excerpts from Child's autobiography - My life in France, choosing parts narrating, in turn, Child's own journey of mastering French cooking, in the backdrop of her relationship with her infintely supportive husband.
Larger-than-life aspects of the story, such as, the dawn of an ordinary call-centre executive's journey to celebrityhood through faith and devotion in a passionate hobby, the success story of the first American French-chef, and then Lady Meryl Streep herself (Thank god for her wisdom of lending her superlative emotive skills to the right projects!), do have their own part in bringing forth this review, but that thing which really spurred the thrill inside me, has more to do with a handful of nonchalant quirks. Literature and Cinema of the kind that depicts life in its everyday manifestations, it's human foibles, It's eccentricities and it's warmth, contains infinite potential to kick awake more than a strand of perspective before us. Precisely the reason why, like I mentioned, this is my genre of choice!
That the central protagonist - Julia - befittingly played by Amy Adams, had passions and foibles identical to my own, helps my cause! Not only figuratively, but LITERALLY a Cube-rat (The literal reference is to her office Cubical), who was quite the wordsmith within, alongside enjoying perfecting amateurish fancy-cooking, Julia was suffering steady asphyxiation on account of the drum in her humdrum beating harder than the day before, each day. Her foibles - Giving up too soon, and, to put it in her own non-euphemistic words - ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder)! The manuscript of a book authored by her, was gathering dust in her closet, unpublished!
At this juncture, Eureka!, we have the two loves of her life - Cookery and Writing - glazed into one brilliant plan, which plan is the genesis ofcourse of her ever-supportive, empathetic husband. The husbands in this movie, well, to die for... and I seriously don't know how to better articulate this fact!!
So from here on, generous heart-warming oodles of butter and merlot, ducks, cream, pork, pudding pies and piquant sauces, lovely colors of great food and imaginary belly-caving smells from ovens and pots on screen, some stray bitter tears and thomping of feet, and the unconditional humoring of said behavior by mothers, sisters, husbands and best friends alike amidst their persistent (familiar to real life!) digs, glide us through not the learning of a life-lesson, but regaining a lost-perspective ... that the soul draws its batteries from accomplishment of realistic everyday goals in pursuit of a bigger, crazy milestone defining one's passion, and life goes on!
Also, since the galvanization of two fantastic arts - Cookery and Writing - was the central theme of the movie, I couldn't help but compare the two, in several of their attributes. Further, since, in the last two days, certain bloggers had decided to play battlefield with the virtual pen (in place of the sword!), and in that bid splashed ink all over cyberspace, causing it to appear blotchy with dirty spots where none were asthetic, I went on to use this comparison to approach the question of creative licence for bloggers!
The Julia Child school of cookery, as depicted in this movie - what is it about, really? Which is that one element in this kind of cooking, which suffices in making an entire school out of the cooking style of someone who is a foreigner to a tradition she learnt only through prolonged, rigorous tutorials, taken from its masters in the heart of the city practicing it? The tradition was already resting in a fully developed state when Child stepped in.. which part of this developed art did she stir up enough so as to launch a new line of formation, forge a new scope of learning? And more importantly, what or who gave her the creative licence to go down this lane? Perhaps it was the ability to give to amateurs, courage camouflaged in punctilious-yet-commodious cooking methods. The courage to recreate the famously supercilious French traditional perfection in modest American kitchens! Similarly, for Julie, I can't possibly assume it was her self-designed challenge of mastering French cooking and raising a cyber-audience for her self-proclaimed "mastery", that landed her willing publishers in the last twenty minutes of the film. If Julia were to be spinning batter such that chunks of it landed more around and less inside her pan, because that batter was made up of onions chopped with imperfect art - the perfect form being too upscale to master - , and Julie made do with boiled eggs in her benedicts pie, because she gave up learning to poach them, it wouldn't be beauty that was being created, it would be mere imposition! And there are no buyers for imposition! No takers, no licence!
The perfection that is French Cooking, is the perfection that is literature! Both being a medium of spreading beauty and nourishment, both indulge the senses! Both art forms are in need of men and women of craft, who will understand the essence of these arts, add a pinch of their own magical innovation to them, and take them forward to shores far and beyond, where these have not yet fully developed, or been rightfully appreciated. May many more Julias find an infinite supply of butter and merlot in their kitchen, but only, if they're wise to patiently poach their eggs, smooth-spin their batter, and add just the ounce of wine to the cooking pot, so that the food that is served is beautiful and nourishing, not ugly and imposing enough for everyone to lose their appetite! The internet and blogspace is that infinite medium available at the fingertips of every key-happy geek like myself, to exercise freedom of speech to one's ample contentment. What a supper it would fill for, if the zest to exercise literary art was added to the zeal to exercise that Right to free speech, and optimistic activism was spread through the written medium!
Neither is literary perfection my forte, yet, nor is it my place to advise the blogspace on ways of accomplishing it, and hence this piece of writing is merely normative contemplation..! It is just a way of saying to fellow bards and wordsmiths .. Let's whip up the custard pudding that the world truly deserves, and say Bon Appetit! :)
